


The Long Road

by wittytitle111



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 20:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9512666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wittytitle111/pseuds/wittytitle111
Summary: The story of Galaren DuMarc: a half-elf rogue who always seems to be in the wrong place at just the right time.





	

No one ever mentions the day after the world ends…and yet there they were. The thought had been poking at Galaren since he’d awoken in a make-shift tent instead of his warm, dry house. He shivered, still half-dazed with sleep and vaguely aware that his left arm was sore and itched uncomfortably.

Galaren shifted and blindly reached over to scratch at his arm before he felt a strong, warm grip wrap around his wrist to stop him. Blinking, the haze of sleep obscured his vision for a moment and turned everything into various shades of brown and tan and grey before finally focusing on a stocky figure hovering over him with a severe frown.

“I’ve just finished putting a new dressing on it. You’ll not be tearin’ it t’off again,” said the woman, the wisps of her gray hair bouncing as she spoke and released his wrist. Galaren furrowed his brow and moved to sit up, coughing as he did so. “Take it slow,” she warned him, but Galaren used his free hand to wave off her concern.

His gaze was drawn to the pale light slipping through the holes of coarsely woven canvas spread around them. Outside, he could hear the sound of fires crackling, the tromp of boots through slushing mud, and the distance ring of steel. “Is it over?” he asked quietly, more to himself than to anyone in particular.

There was a sudden, deep groan to his left and he shifted slightly on his cot to see another man no older than thirty sweating and grimacing with pain. It took another moment for Galaren to realize that the man was missing most of his right arm, and the man’s leg was also bandaged and weeping with blood stains. A shock of panic coursed down Galaren’s spine as he felt for his own arm, clutching at the rough cloth and feeling all the way to his fingers before sighing with relief.

The older woman watched him carefully, the red and white of her chantry robes soiled with stains of blood and mud and bile. “Some was luckier than others,” she noted, nodding to him. Galaren flexed his fingers cautiously, staring down at his lap rather than risk seeing the injured man again.

“Will he, er…will he be alright?” he asked awkwardly.

The woman hummed, though it was tinged with doubt. “His life is in the Maker’s hands now,” she said. Galaren nodded slowly. The man groaned again in pain and Galaren looked up to see if the woman would tend to him, but she didn’t seem perturbed and remained on her stool between the cots with gnarled hands resting on her knees like roots. “You’re not a soldier,” she observed.

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I apprentice for Harmon.”

“You _used_ to, y’mean,” she said with a derisive snort.

Galaren looked at her bewildered and his whole body tensed. With so much chaos, he hadn’t been of the mind to even think about Harmon, let alone check on the old man. “What happened?”

“Went down t’ the valley with the soldiers. Didn’t come back up again, as I heard,” she said.

 _Of course he did, bloody old fool,_ Galaren thought bleakly. He sighed and tried to run a hand through his dark curling hair, but his fingers stuck in knots and mats of dried mud until he was forced to give up and put his hand down again. The events of yesterday pulsed painfully behind Galaren’s eyes in brief flashes, but he blinked them away and covered his face with a hand as he tried to get his bearing again. They should all be dead by now—why weren’t they?

“I…I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his hand and turning on his cot so his feet rested on the cold ground beneath him. “I don’t remember what happened.”

“Not any of it?” she asked, her almost non-existent brows pulling upwards into her hood and all her wrinkles with them.

“No, I, er…I remember the explosion. I remember…there was screaming and light. And then--…” he paused to take a deep breath, feeling his heart starting to rise in throat as the memory of fear crept into his veins. “They were sending soldiers to the valley. I was…I was just passed the bridge to help defend the barricades. And then….” Galaren’s eyes closed and he shivered violently.

Yellow eyes, and grotesque, misshapen beasts of shadow and claws—creatures of the most twisted nightmares invaded his thoughts, crowding out reality with pure fear. A gentle pat on his knee brought him back and he gasped. Galaren blinked himself back to the present and stared wide-eyed at the woman as she attempted to soothe him.

She nodded knowingly. “The horrors of the Fade are hard t’forget,” she said.

“We fought them. Held the bridge and then something…sharp,” he said, reaching over and grasping his bandaged arm gingerly.

“Knocked your head a bit,” she supplied, taking her hand away and standing up from her stool to hobble over to a nearby sack. Galaren hummed quietly in acknowledgement. He did remember getting pushed back, but the memory was too fuzzy to piece together who or what actually knocked him unconscious.

From the other side of the tent, he could hear the tinkling of glass vials rolling against one another as the woman continued to rummage inside the sack. She huffed and mumbled something to herself that he couldn’t quite hear before finally pulling out a red tinged bottle that appeared empty at first glance. Only when the woman settled on her stool again did he venture to speak again.

“I heard the Right Hand of the Divine took some soldiers to the Temple. Did they…did they make it?” he asked.

The woman didn’t answer at first, instead pushing the potion vial into his grip and motioning impatiently for him to take it. Galaren uncorked the vial and drained whatever was left—barely enough to be called a sip—and felt a pleasant warm glow in his stomach and spreading out through his fingers and toes, chasing away the winter chill.

“The Seeker Cassandra led ‘em to the Temple, and through the Maker’s righteous might, they sealed the Breach and all th’ demons away,” she said. He handed the bottle back to her carefully and rolled his shoulders, suddenly feeling more alert and anxious to get out of a tent that smelled of sickness and piss and death.

“They sealed it? Maker’s breath, is it really over, then?”

She pursed her lips doubtfully. “Don’t know about that, serah. We’ll know when the Herald wakes, if she ever does.”

“Herald?” he asked.

“Some little elven lass,” she said with a disapproving sniff. “Got a mark on her hand that sealed the Breach. The Maker’s chosen one.”

Galaren raised a skeptical eyebrow. The Maker wasn’t that fond of elves, so far as he’d seen. The thought seemed to pass between them and the woman simply shrugged in response. Galaren would just have to see it for himself.

“Can I leave?” he asked.

She nodded to a corner of the tent. “Your clothes were a bit too ragged. Scrounged up a uniform that might fit well enough. Even came with a pair of boots,” she said, somewhat impressed.

Galaren glanced around the tent again, making sure not to linger on the mutilated. “Sorry, but…did anyone by chance bring my bow back?” he asked. The old woman shook her head. It _was_ a little too much to hope for. He’d had that bow since Gwaren…but hopefully he could scavenge another one. Unlikely that Harmon left enough of their savings to afford something new, anyhow.

The woman stood again, this time bringing over a bucket of water and setting it down heavily by his cot. “Clean yourself up and get dressed. We’ll need that cot for some other poor soul,” she grumbled, and then started to head towards the tent flap exit.

“Apologies, I didn’t ask for your name,” he said.

“Mother Margaret, if you please, serah,” she answered without turning around, and then left the tent.

 _As if the world couldn’t get any more bizarre,_ thought Galaren as he stood up from his cot. He wobbled for a moment and then caught himself on one of the rough wooden poles holding the tent in its shape. The dying man groaned again, whimpering, and Galaren tried his best to ignore it. After apprenticing as a hunter for so long, Galaren felt compelled to slip a knife in the man’s chest and just be done with it…a quick, clean kill to end the suffering. If he stayed in the tent much longer, the sounds might just move him enough to try.

With a renewed sense of urgency, Galaren knelt down by the bucket and dipped forward until he could soak his hair thoroughly in the water, sucking in a quick breath as the chilled water sloshed against his scalp. He did his best to work out the dirt and blood and whatever else might be stuck in his hair before coming up again and squeezing out the excess water with his hands. Then he sat back on his heels, took a deep breath, and braced himself for the cold before splashing his face and quickly washing over his shoulders and chest.

“Maker’s balls--!” he cursed quietly, even as his teeth began to chatter. He considered washing the rest of himself, but then decided he wasn’t a complete masochist and it would just have to wait. Still shivering, he hopped over to the uniform and picked through its contents. It was well-made and seemed fairly new…not something you would just find anywhere. He put it on anyway; it was too cold to argue where it came from, and not like it mattered. Once he was dressed, he wasted no time getting out of the tent and into fresher air.

The mountains hovered over the small village of Haven like stone guardians all dressed in winter white. To his left, the land sloped down gently toward the lake which was frozen solid into a sheet of grey and to his right were the gates of Haven. Galaren had expected the sounds of the village to be muffled within the confines of the tent, but out in the open the world still seemed…hushed.

Just as he was becoming unnerved by the silence, he turned his head at the sound of a wail and watched a few weeping women following behind a cart loaded with wrapped corpses. The cart struggled down the path towards a clearing where they would no doubt be given rights and burned to ashes. Galaren had witnessed the somber aftermath of battle once before, but this felt different somehow. Before, the Champion had slain the Arishok and everything more or less went back to how it did before. But this…

He took a few steps away from the tent and looked up at the sky. Not so very far in the distance, a swirling hurricane of clouds centered on the remains of the Templar of Sacred Ashes. Once a holy ruin that promised peace and compromise, it now smoldered on the mountain side like a pit of yesterday’s coals. A sickening, unnatural green tinge seeped into the clouds above, growing more saturated until it reached the center. The whole thing reeked of magic and it made him shiver.

“You there!” a voice called from behind. Galaren didn’t move, assuming whoever was shouting couldn’t possibly be shouting at him. “Maker’s breath, man, don’t just stand there gawking,” said the voice, now closer to him and instantly recognizable. He spun around, nearly tripping over his own feet to face the imposing figure of Kirkwall’s former Knight-Captain.

 _What in the Void…?_ Galaren thought in a panic. “I-I’m sorry?” he asked, dazed.

The Knight-Captain frowned impatiently. “I don’t need apologies. I need you back with your squad and up on that mountain.”

“My…? I’m not--...” Galaren hesitated, scrambling for words.

The Knight-Captain’s expression seemed to soften just slightly, but that could have been Galaren’s imagination. He waited as the other man inhaled slowly, and then spoke again with a more level tone. “There are too many bodies on that mountain that need to be brought home. They gave their lives; the least we can do is give them the Maker’s peace.” Galaren’s jaw was still slacked in confusion, but he quickly closed it with a sharp click and nodded dumbly in response.

Knight-Captain Cullen looked over his clothing quickly and gestured, every movement measured and precise. “I know you’re probably not used to working in this kind of arrangement, but every pair of hands is necessary right now, and I’m sure the Chantry will make sure you’re compensated.”

“Yes, uh…ser,” he fumbled out.

The Knight-Captain ignored Galaren’s apprehension and instead pointed in the direction of the large stone bridge to the west of the town. “The rest of the volunteers will be meeting there. If you have a weapon, bring it; if not, we can try to outfit you with something so you’re not walking into the valley completely unarmed.”

“Er…thanks. Ser. Thank you, ser,” he corrected, wincing at his own awkwardness. Knight-Captain Cullen nodded briskly in response and then turned on his heel and marched back away towards the gates of Haven. Galaren watched him go, suddenly feeling queasy. Had he just been recruited? He looked down at his uniform again. There was some sort of crest near his left shoulder…probably belonging to a guard for one of the noble houses that had attended the Conclave.

His options were now clear: with Harmon dead, he could just take his place as Haven’s hunter and trapper, though the Chantry’s activity and demons had probably scared off all the game. Not to mention he didn’t even have a bow to hunt with…. His gaze drifted towards the bridge. Galaren was a good fighter in a pinch, and not a bad marksman besides. The Knight-Captain had even mentioned compensation of some kind, but that also meant taking orders and pretending at being a soldier _and_ fighting demons.

“Maker’s balls, I better not regret this,” he muttered. Taking a deep breath, he smoothed a hand through his hair and sent up a silent prayer to the Maker and Andraste. _Only doing this because you didn’t let me get eaten yesterday,_ he specified, casting a nervous glance up at the roiling sky. And then he pulled himself up and made his way to the bridge.


End file.
